


Mudblood Discourse

by thehousewedestroyed



Series: The Rubbish Bin Behind the House We Destroyed Along The Way [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (to be safe), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, Discourse, Hogwarts Era, Hogwarts Fourth Year, Hogwarts Sixth Year, M/M, Time Skips, Underage Sex, Vampire!Dolohov, Werewolf Draco Malfoy, Yule Ball (Harry Potter), conferences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2019-06-22 04:17:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15573576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehousewedestroyed/pseuds/thehousewedestroyed
Summary: Draco has had a crush on the Ravenclaw beater for years, and now he's sitting next to him at the Yule Ball.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "What if Nico Pereyra was a muggleborn wizard?" - asked [no one ever](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12614376/chapters/28737636). 
> 
> The tags currently on the fic relate to the first chapter, primarily. I'll add more when I post the next update, as the tone shifts pretty dramatically between each part. If you've read _Werewolf Discourse_ you already know I get into niche holes I can't dig myself out of. It's just more of that.

The ceiling of the Great Hall is black like rich velvet, glittering stars winking through the garlands of holly and mistletoe that hang draped across the sky. The walls are frosted in a layer of shimmering ice. The whole thing is almost overwhelmingly festive and Draco is trying to be snide about it, but can't quite find the heart. 

There are a lot of things he doesn't like about Hogwarts, such as the relentless sanctimoniousness and the festering presence of mudbloods. But the Yule Ball is alright. Aloud, he says that it's almost an attempt at proper Wizarding tradition. But in reality, he just likes Christmas. 

It isn't perfect, of course. A spike of jealousy passes through him as he moves through the tables to find his seat and spots Potter moving to sit at the Champion’s table along with the Ministry’s representatives and Krum. Of course Potter gets pride of place. Of course. And Granger too. Typical. Disgusting. 

Pansy’s puce nails dig into his forearm where she's intertwined her arm with his. ‘Don't be bitter,’ she snickers. 

Draco huffs. ‘I'm not.’ He pulls out his spot at the table and sits down, slouching slightly. He neglects to pull out Pansy’s chair for her. She can sit her own bloody arse down. At this table. In the corner of the room. Out of the way. ‘I'm ready to have a great night.’ 

Pointedly, Pansy drags her chair out so that it scrapes loudly on the stone floor and takes her seat. There is only one other couple at this table so far, a pair of seventh year Hufflepuffs absorbed in conversation. Draco ignores them. 

‘You wish you were up there next to Krum instead of Granger,’ Pansy tells him. 

‘Hardly.’ 

‘You fancy him.’ 

‘I don't _fancy_ him,’ Draco objects, which is true. Even if he does indeed wish he were up there at that table. ‘I don't fancy anyone.’ 

Pansy gives him a sidelong look, and the universe, with all its sense of ironic timing, chooses that moment to partake in a small, embarrassing Christmas miracle. 

The chair on Draco’s other side moves and he glances over to see the Ravenclaw beater sitting down. Next to him. For the feast. 

A short moment of consideration hints at him that perhaps it wasn't a Christmas miracle so much as Pansy seeing him coming and deliberately preparing to tease Draco. 

‘Hey,’ says the Ravenclaw beater. 

Draco tries to say something back, but the sound he makes comes out choked and unintelligible. 

Pansy kicks him under the table. He can sense her laughing. Lord, he didn’t prepare for this. 

To say that Draco has a history with the Ravenclaw beater would be wholly inaccurate. Here are the sum of Draco’s prior interactions with him: he has played against him in a handful of Quidditch matches. He sees him sometimes at breakfast and dinner, across the Hall. Occasionally he glimpses him in the corridor. He is not hard to glimpse, he’s quite tall. 

To add to this, Draco knows three things about the Ravenclaw beater. They are: his surname is Pereyra. He got some award for academic excellence at a feast once. He is _fucking gorgeous_. 

He doesn’t even know his first name, or what year he is in. And yet. _And yet_ , Pansy has been ribbing him for well over a year for his stupid obvious crush on the guy. One time, Draco took a bludger from the Ravenclaw beater to the chest during a match and didn’t even notice because he was too distracted by the way his arms looked as he swung the club. 

But it’s not so dire as it all sounds. 

_Say words_ , Draco reminds himself. _Say actual words like people do._

‘Merry Christmas,’ he gets out, causing Pansy to spit up into her freshly served goblet of pumpkin juice. 

The look on the Ravenclaw beater’s face is awful. He’s grinning, tongue pressed behind his front teeth as though trying to fight back an even bigger smile. His dark eyes are glittering. ‘He speaks!’ he says, amusement dancing in his voice, and Draco wants to die. ‘It’s Malfoy, right?’ 

‘It’s—yes, of course.’ Forcibly, he pulls himself together. ‘Pereyra? You play on the Ravenclaw team.’ 

‘Yeah, and you’re Slytherin seeker. You’re good.’ 

‘So are you,’ Draco says. He looks past Pereyra, at the empty seat next to him. ‘Where’s your date?’ 

‘Don’t have one. And all my friends paired off, the wankers, leaving me all alone.’ He mimes a tear falling down his cheek. ‘Poor me. I figured I’d just bother whatever poor sap got plonked next to me, that’s what I usually do. It looks like that’s you.’ 

‘My lucky night,’ Draco says, intending to sound at least a little bit dry. He’s unsure he hits the right note. Belatedly, he adds: ‘This is Pansy,’ and points at Pansy. 

‘Alright?’ Pereyra says to Pansy. ‘Girlfriend?’ 

Pansy mimes shaving her face. Draco elbows her, but Pereyra has already cracked up laughing. 

‘Gotcha,’ he says. 

‘I hate you,’ Draco tells Pansy. ‘I’m not talking to you.’ 

Somewhat sulkily, Pansy replies, ‘You were hardly going to talk to me anyway.’

The Hall is filling up now, people settling at their small tables. The other seats on their own are populated, fortunately — and to Draco’s mild delight — including one other Slytherin girl from the year below them who Pansy is rather friendly with. He has the sudden warm feeling of being off the hook, and turns back to face Pereyra, who has picked up the menu on the table in front of him and is looking it over. 

Draco props his chin on his hand. ‘What year are you in, anyway?’ 

‘Oh, that’s good to hear,’ Pereyra says. ‘I’m glad you couldn’t immediately just sense the stress of O.W.L.s on me. I’ve been worried I’m giving off a stench.’ 

So he’s only a year above them, Draco thinks, pleased. He was slightly concerned that Pereyra was in sixth or seventh year, but no. He’s just tall. ‘No, you smell nice,’ he replies automatically, then immediately picks up his own menu and buries his nose in it, feeling his cheeks warm. _Stupid_. 

But Pereyra just says, ‘Thanks!’ He places his order with his plate, and then twists in his chair and looks at Draco. ‘How bullshit is it that we don’t get to play this year?’ 

Draco is grateful for the easy and effortless conversation that is Quidditch. He glances quickly over his shoulder to check on Pansy, but finds her happily involved in gossiping with her friend, so he swivels his seat a quarter of the way around so that his back is to her and he can talk to Pereyra with all his attention. 

It’s not what he expected, spending the Yule Ball in deep, animated conversation with the Ravenclaw beater. Even in the deep, dark recesses of his spank bank, he’s never really considered actually talking to Pereyra. He thought him incredibly good looking, sure — but he had no idea if there was a personality to go along with it, and the idea of finding out was... impractical? Intimidating? 

But it turns out that talking to Pereyra is actually incredibly easy. They don’t get into anything deep. It’s Quidditch, Triwizard Tournament, Quidditch World Cup, Krum, O.W.L.s, Quidditch, the food they’re eating, and then back to Quidditch. But before long they are trading stories of flying mishaps and injuries, and they’re both laughing and Pereyra is slapping the table as he talks, and Draco’s voice is getting louder — and they’re being kind of obnoxious and Draco finds he does not care. 

When the Weird Sisters come out and start playing a slow dance, Draco only spends about ten seconds derisively watching Potter fumble around on the dancefloor before turning his attention back to his table-mate. 

‘Draco, I’m going to go dance with Blaise,’ Pansy says, tapping him on the shoulder. 

Draco waves her off. ‘Good luck with that,’ he replies, tilting his head back to smirk at her. ‘You know he hates dancing.’ 

‘He’s going to suck it up.’ 

‘Do _you_ like dancing?’ Pereyra asks, as she leaves the table. 

Does he like dancing? Draco isn’t too sure. He thinks he probably shouldn’t. He certainly shouldn’t like slow-dancing under a canopy of stars at a school function. But the fact that it’s the Ravenclaw beater asking the question sort of makes him want to say an emphatic yes. But instead he just finishes off his drink and honestly replies, ‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Don’t get many opportunities to dance, do we? Maybe this should be a more regular thing. Like a school disco or something.’ 

‘A disco?’ 

‘Muggle dance thing,’ Pereyra answers, and Draco snorts derisively. Pereyra shrugs.‘Yeah, I don’t reckon people here would be that into it either. But it could be funny.’ 

‘Certainly. I expect that would be hilarious. Small miracles Dumbledore hasn’t gone that far off the deep end yet.’ 

‘Only a matter of time,’ says Pereyra ominously. The slow, mournful ballad the band is playing fades out and picks up into something more upbeat. Pereyra looks at Draco with a grin, tongue caught between his front teeth. He pushes his chair back. ‘Dance with me.’ 

Something inside Draco freezes. ‘We… we’re both boys,’ he finds himself saying, without really thinking about it. 

‘No bloody shit.’ Pereyra stands up, holding out his hand. ‘It’s just a bit of fun, mate. For a laugh.’ 

Draco gets to his feet. 

It is a bit of a laugh, he finds. It’s not like the first dance where everyone was trying to spin slow circles, looking all awkwardly romantic and uncomfortable. Instead it’s just a lot of jumping around like an idiot, really. Draco’s velvet dress robes aren’t really suited to this, but he makes do the best he can. Pereyra, he notices, is wearing an odd style of dress robes which don’t fall all the way to the floor, instead transitioning into something more like regular pressed trousers. It’s unusual, but he looks nice, and he definitely has more freedom to dance. 

Vaguely aware of the other students around them, Draco feels like he is (once again) being a little obnoxious. Both he and Pereyra are dancing a bit more bombastically than perhaps most of those around them. At one point he feels himself elbow Granger, who has somehow ended up close by, dancing with Krum. 

‘Watch yourself, mudblood,’ he hisses at her, low enough not to be heard by either of their partners. 

He sees Granger open her mouth to shoot something back at him. Then she catches sight of Pereyra, and closes her mouth. She raises an eyebrow. ‘Having fun, Malfoy?’ 

He flips her the two finger salute. 

‘Yeah!’ Pereyra interjects, noticing the interaction. He matches Draco’s rude gesture, but does so with a grin and a wink. ‘Up yours, famous international Quidditch player.’ 

Draco starts. ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t—’ He turns to look at Krum, who seems thoroughly bemused by the entire exchange. ‘That wasn’t at you.’ 

‘Up yours?’ Krum says, flipping them off back. 

Pereyra bursts out in uproarious laughter and grabs Draco’s hand. ‘Come on, keep dancing,’ he says. Draco lets himself be swirled away, also laughing — although he has the sudden sensation that he’s missed something. 

‘I don’t want to get in trouble for flipping off Viktor Krum,’ he says, concerned. 

‘I think that’s a _great_ thing to get in trouble for,’ Pereyra replies, pulling him back to dance closer. ‘A good story, innit?’ 

He glances back in Granger’s direction again, feeling unsettled, and finds her dancing further away, but still looking at him out of the corner of her narrowed eyes. 

‘I think I’ve had enough dancing for now,’ he says to Pereyra, stepping back. The other boy’s hand feels very warm in his, and he’s heating up under the high collar of his robes. The proximity to people and the pace of the music isn’t helping. He needs some fresh air, he decides. Now. ‘Do you feel like a walk in the garden?’

He doesn’t want to separate from Pereyra tonight, he realises. He’s having too much fun. But he also feels like he’s making a spectacle of himself, dancing like an idiot with him in full view of everyone. He needs to get away from the rest of the students. Just for a little while, at least. 

Pereyra gives him a curious look. ‘Want to find somewhere quiet?’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

Outside, the night air is cold in a way that feels a little bit like passing into another world. Draco takes a deep inhale as they step out the main doors and the heat of the Great Hall chills onto his skin, refreshing. Snow is falling in soft flurries, and glowing fairies dance around the scattered maze of rose bushes and low hedges. The moonlight shines down on them, a silver glow. 

There are plenty of other students walking the garden paths and sitting together on tucked away benches. Draco realises with a flush that most — if not all — of them seem to either be walking hand in hand or sucking face. There is a conspicuous absence of teacher presence, at least right now. 

Wrapping his arms around himself against the chill, Draco tries not to flush as he follows Pereyra along the path. ‘It’s a little twee,’ he mutters critically. 

The Ravenclaw laughs. ‘Follow me, then,’ he says. He turns to walk along the side of the castle, waving for Draco to follow him. ‘I know a good spot.’ 

‘A good spot for what?’

‘Getting high,’ Pereyra answers, then glances at Draco, taking stock of his surprised expression. ‘I mean, not right now. I just — it’s somewhere a bit more secluded, is what I mean.’ 

‘You do that here?’ 

‘There’s plenty of stuff in the potions cupboards, if you know where to look.’ He looks back toward the castle. ‘We can if you want?’ 

‘No,’ Draco says quickly. ‘Maybe… maybe another time. We’re not going far, right?’ 

‘Not far at all.’ They have reached a low hedge which marks the edge of the garden prepared for the ball, hugging the wall to the castle. Easily, Pereyra jumps the hedge and then helps Draco climb over it, checking that there are no teachers on patrol. He ducks low under a castle window and hurries vaguely in the direction of the lake. ‘This way.’ 

‘We’re not going anywhere near that filthy cabin?’ Hagrid’s hut sits across the open lawn, a vague shadow in the near distance. 

‘Sort of.’ The glimmering fairies from the garden just behind them are no longer lighting the path, but the clear night and the warm lights from the castle windows keep everything illuminated. Draco vaguely has the sense they are not even really leaving the Ball behind, especially when they turn into a new garden path and Pereyra leads him down through another galley of rose bushes to an isolated corner, overhung with what seems like a vined archway, tucked just below the actual garden upstairs. ‘The garden was going to be two-tiered tonight,’ Pereyra explains. ‘But they decided to keep it small. Hagrid was still growing this area out though.’ 

It’s nice, Draco decides, looking around. The spot is walled on almost all sides by low bushes, except the path they came down, which turns quickly to a corner, so that they are truly alone. He can see the still black surface of the lake a little ways away, but they haven’t really gone far. He can still make out most of the lyrics of the music coming from the Hall above them.

‘Here,’ Pereyra says, pulling out his wand and summoning a small fire into his palm which he lowers gently onto a nearby stone, warming the chilled air around them. With another quick charm, he conjures a small wooden bench, tucked into the corner of the archway. ‘This good with you?’ 

Draco has the sudden, startling realisation that he’s about to snog someone. That’s the idea, isn’t it? That’s the only reason for stealing away to a quiet corner like this, unless they _were_ going to get stoned. He’s never snogged anyone before. Not really. Not unless you count closed mouthed pecks with Pansy. 

‘Oh,’ he says, and sits down. That warm feeling under his collar is back, despite the cold winter air. 

He really _wants_ to snog the Ravenclaw beater. 

Pereyra sits down next to him, stretching out to lean back on the makeshift bench. He rolls his shoulders, cracking them. One hand is resting on the wood right next to Draco’s thigh. ‘Oh, this song,’ he comments. ‘I hate this song.’ Draco can hear the beat, the soft melody. He doesn’t recognise the music. 

It might just be a nervous tick, but the other boy is singing along under this breath. _‘But say a prayer and pray for the other ones at Christmas time, it's hard but while you're having fun...’_

He has a lovely singing voice, actually. 

‘If you would prefer to be back up there,’ Draco offers hesitantly. 

Pereyra grins at him, still humming. Then he huffs out a laugh, his breath coming out on the air as condensation. ‘It’s best we stay out of harm's way for a bit,’ he says. ‘They probably have aurors scouting for us as we speak for the crime of disrespecting Viktor Krum.’

Draco shuffles a little bit closer to him, conspicuously shivering against the cold. ‘Brr,’ he hints strongly. 

His hint is taken well. A strong arm slides around his back, hand rubbing up and down the velvet covering his arm. ‘You are gay, right?’ Pereyra asks out of nowhere. 

And here Draco was trying to keep it subtle. ‘Yeah, obviously,’ he answers, a touch exasperated. ‘I’m pretty sure.’ 

‘Pretty sure?’ 

‘Only one way to test out the theory.’ 

‘Oh, you need _data points_ ,’ Pereyra says, and Draco isn’t sure anyone has ever said “data points” flirtatiously before, but Merlin, it’s going to work on him. 

Slightly clumsily, he turns his head to brush his lips to Pereya’s. They were already sitting close enough that it is hardly even a movement, but the moment their lips touch Draco feels a lurch in his chest. He’s kissing the Ravenclaw beater. He’s kissing _the Ravenclaw beater_. 

It’s not as good as he would have thought it would be. 

Pulling back, Draco wets his lips with his tongue. ‘Er,’ he says. 

‘Hold on, that wasn’t very good,’ Pereyra replies. He shuffles around a bit, moving his hand down to Draco’s lower back to pull him back in, closer. ‘Take two.’ 

The second attempt is a distinct improvement. The angle is a lot less awkward, and this time he feels Pereyra’s mouth move against his, a slight brush of tongue as his lips open more, suck lightly at Draco’s lower lip. Draco exhales shakily and shifts closer, reaching out to stroke his fingers through Pereyra’s thick, curly hair. The kiss lasts longer this time. It is still fumbling and a bit slow, Draco aware of everything he is doing, and not necessarily in a good way. But when they part this time, he finds himself panting slightly and his heart is thudding in his throat. He really wants to keep kissing. 

‘Is this okay?’ Pereyra asks. 

Draco nods emphatically. ‘Keep going,’ he urges. ‘This is good.’ 

Draco likes to think he’s a fast learner. And he might be, because he thinks he’s catching on to this quickly, responding to the way Pereya kisses him in turn, mimicking movements. But out of the two of them, Pereyra is definitely faster on this particular uptake. Every time his lips touch Draco’s, it’s better, surer, deeper — until Draco is moaning into his mouth and wrapping his arms around his neck, trying to get closer the longer they go on. 

Pereyra swears against his mouth as Draco pushes himself up to kneel, swing his leg over the other boy’s lap and straddle him. His strong fingers press into Draco’s sides, where he is gripping him over the dress robes. ‘We should…’ 

Draco isn’t sure how long they have been out here. Twenty minutes of snogging? Forty? An hour? It doesn’t matter. There is music still playing upstairs, and as long as music is playing, he can keep making out with the Ravenclaw beater. ‘We should what?’ he asks into Pereya’s mouth. 

‘I dunno,’ Pereyra murmurs back. His hips shift, and now that Draco is sitting on his lap he can feel the warm press of hardness against his inner thigh. Draco is hard too — has been for a while — but knowing, _feeling_ Pereyra’s arousal as well sparks something in him, a sense of directionless urgency. 

‘We can’t do anything,’ Draco says, some sensible part of his brain still working. ‘I just…’ 

‘No, but keep snogging though, yeah?’ 

‘Yeah—yeah, please—’ 

Pereyra leans up for another kiss, which Draco deepens, groaning against his mouth as he feels his cock twitch under him. Fuck. _Fuck_. A hand slides from his side to his back and then down to his arse, squeezing and pulling closer, and it’s still nothing, it’s nothing _really_ , except there is a hand on his arse and he can feel Pereyra’s tongue against his and he can roll his hips forward and it feels so much like _something_. 

He whimpers. 

‘You’re so fit,’ Pereyra pants, breaking the kiss to instead mouth at Draco’s jawline, and then down his neck. The shiver that runs through him starts at the warm press of Pereyra’s mouth to his pulse point and travels all the way down his spine. He feels his own dick jump. 

‘Ah—’ he gasps. ‘That’s good.’ 

‘Like this?’ Pereyra nudges Draco’s head further to the side with a bump of his nose and keeps kissing up and down his throat. Scraping teeth. Then, suddenly, sucking against his skin, a small nip of a bite. Draco’s hips jerk forward. 

‘Keep going,’ he moans, tightening his grip on Pereyra’s hair, holding him close.

Pereya moves to a different spot, kissing soothingly and then bite-sucking again. It’s too good. It’s going to leave marks, Draco is pretty certain — but he can’t care right now, to absorbed in the warm feeling spreading over his whole body, the tension coiling inside him, the way his dick throbs in time with the blood pounding in his neck, pulse hammering against Pereyra’s lips and tongue. 

It feels like a slow build, and he had no idea that such a small thing, the warm press of someone else’s mouth against his skin, the heat of his body through their robes, could do this to him. 

A bite to the earlobe, then another mark sucked just below it — and Draco lets out a deep groan and shivers through the sudden waves of sensation. He slumps forward against Pereyra’s broad chest, gasping for air.

‘Did you just…?’ 

Embarrassment flushes through Draco almost as fast as his arousal ebbs. ‘I…’ 

‘That’s so hot,’ Pereyra murmurs. He turns his head to kiss the side of Draco’s mouth, and Draco pushes himself up enough to hesitantly return the kiss. 

Although now that he’s uncomfortably sticky, he finds himself somewhat less inspired to keep going. ‘I'm done,’ he announces. ‘I don't—’ 

Pereyra nods. ‘It's probably time to get up to bed,’ he says. ‘I, uh… I'm really going to get to bed pronto, if you don't mind.’

‘Not at all.’ 

They steal back up to the castle, sneaking back into the fairy lit gardens and then avoiding the Great Hall — which is significantly emptier than before. It seems that people have begun to retire for the evening. Back in the bright corridors, the time spent down in the gardens seems somewhat surreal, and Draco finds himself glancing at Pereyra as though checking he is real, and that it really happened. 

‘Well,’ Draco says at the door that leads down to the dungeons. ‘Er. Goodnight.’ 

‘See you round, I s’pose.’ The words could easily sound dismissive, but somehow coming from Pereyra they actually feel like a warm flush in Draco’s chest. 

When he gets back to the dormitory, he immediately showers, pausing only long enough at his bed to grab his pyjamas to change into. Crabbe and Goyle are in their beds, already snoring, bless them. Blaise and Theo are still up though, and Pansy is sitting up with them, whispering. 

‘Draco—’ she says as he passes, but he shoos her as he hurries to the bathroom. 

When he is clean and warm, he steps back out into the dormitory, throwing his now rumpled dress robes on the floor next to his bed for the house-elfs to sort out. 

He climbs onto his bed. 

‘Draco,’ Pansy says again. ‘Where did you go tonight?’

‘None of your business.’ 

‘You weren't still with that Ravenclaw boy, right? Theo thinks he saw you two running away somewhere.’ 

Draco glances at Theo, who looks a little bit like the cat who got the cream. 

‘So what if I was?’ 

‘Everyone saw you dancing with him,’ Blaise drawls. 

‘Yes, it was a _dance_. That's the idea.’

‘It's the idea to dance with mudbloods?’ Theo asks. 

Ice trickles down Draco’s spine, followed by a wave of nausea climbing upwards. He lets out a reflexive gagging sound and starts wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘What?’ He retches again, trying to clean off his tongue. ‘He's— What?!’ 

Theo and Blaise both start laughing at him. Pansy looks a little ill. It's nothing compared to how Draco feels. 

‘You _snogged_ him?’ she asks, appalled. ‘Draco, look at your neck—’ 

‘I didn't know he was a mudblood!’ 

‘He's such a mudblood,’ Theo explains, wheezing. ‘He runs a little mudblood science group. He has a mudblood pride badge on his school bag! He once got into an argument with _Granger_ because she said something dismissive about dentists.’ 

Turning on Pansy, Draco hisses, ‘You didn't say anything!’

‘I didn't know either!’ 

Burying his face in his hands, Draco groans. He flops into his back on the bed, letting out an angry noise of frustration. ‘None of you can tell anyone that I kissed him,’ he warns the others through his hands. ‘If that gets around—’

‘What if he tells people?’ points out Pansy. 

Draco’s stomach drops enough that he thinks he feels the bed sink. ‘I'll make sure he doesn't,’ he threatens, although in honestly he's unsure how that will play out. ‘If he _dares_...’

‘How on earth did it not occur to you to check?’ Blaise asks, disbelieving.

‘Mudbloods aren't meant to be good at Quidditch!’ Draco shoots back and, humiliated, charms the curtains around his bed to close and seal up tight. 

*

In the morning, he spots Pereyra at the breakfast table. Draco rose late that morning, in the vague hope that he'd miss the breakfast rush and not see anyone — but unfortunately for him, Pereyra seems to have had the same idea, along with half of the school. The tables are packed with dozy students lazily picking their way through their breakfasts. 

When he spots Draco, Pereyra waves his toast in cheerful greeting before taking a large bite. Unlike at the Ball last night, this morning Pereyra is surrounded, as per usual, by his friends. It sends a spike of alarm through Draco. _Has he said anything? Has he told them?_

Deliberately, Draco pretends not to have seen him and maintains the illusion all throughout breakfast, and throughout the morning, throughout lunch, throughout dinner, and then through every day until classes start again when the holidays are over. 

However, in the break between Potions and Charms class on the first day back, he spots Pereyra in the hallway and strides over to him, shoving through some second years on his way.

‘What’s up, mate?’ Pereyra asks, leaning his shoulder against the wall. The hallway is by no means empty, which is good. Draco wants something of an audience. 

Now that he’s looking at Pereyra properly on a regular school day, he realises he _was_ stupid not to realise what he is. There are little things about his appearance, the way he puts himself together, that point to things that a real wizard just wouldn’t do. He has the front of his robes open and his shirt unbuttoned to show a white vest underneath, silver chain disappearing down the neck. Out of the front pocket of his robes hangs an intricately carved bronze cross on a string of knotted black beads. His school bag hangs at his hip, and Theo was right — there is an ugly patch stitched onto it that consists of a brown teardrop shape against a bright red background. _Mudblood_. Sewn next to it is another patch, a rainbow flag. Below that is a shiny button with a fluro green alien head, and the words ‘ _Out of this world_ ’.

His wand is sticking out of his wild mess of dark curly hair. 

‘You filthy, mudblood _creep_ ,’ Draco spits. ‘Get out of my way.’ 

Pereyra blinks slowly, once, and then says in a flat voice, ‘I mean, you walked up to me...’ 

‘You’re disgusting. You don’t belong here. Your kind shouldn’t be allowed to even set foot in this school. What on earth makes you think you can _talk_ to me?’ 

A raised eyebrow. ‘You seemed plenty up for talking the other night.’ Pereyra’s voice is completely level, which is frustrating. Draco hoped to get a rise out of him, at the very least. Instead he’s still leaning on the stone wall, fiddling with the rosary in his pocket as he looks Draco up and down. 

Draco lowers his voice. ‘You tricked me.’ 

‘I honestly assumed you knew. Forgive me for thinking that you were just an alright bloke who didn’t care about blood status. I try to avoid stereotyping people, but I can see I fucked up there.’ 

‘You’re a lying, worthless mudblood, and you need to get out of my way before I _move_ you out of the way.’ 

‘I’ll be sure to wear the t-shirt announcing it next time,’ Pereyra says cooly. ‘Or better yet, just get it tattooed right on my face. Make it easier when your kind start to try to get rid of us, right?’ 

‘ _My kind_ ,’ Draco repeats. ‘Wizards.’ 

‘Entitled fascist bigots.’ 

‘Fuck you,’ Draco snaps, elbowing past him. He storms up the corridor, and hears behind him Pereyra call out, _‘Well, hey, fuck you too!’_

Draco smirks in triumph as a handful of gathered first years who were watching the interaction quickly start, and scatter out of his way. Behind him, he can hear Pereyra let out a short, disbelieving expletive, and he knows he got a reaction: which is what he wanted, after all. 

If there is a sinking feeling in his chest, he ignores it well enough not to so much as know it’s there.


	2. Chapter 2

Heart pounding, Draco runs up the castle steps, fast footsteps echoing too loud to his own ears in the quiet of the night. Slats of moonlight fall from the high windows above him, and he passes through them in a rush as he hurries upstairs. _Fuck_. He doesn't have time for this. 

‘Forty-four counterclockwise,’ he pants to himself, a mantra so that he doesn't forget as he rushes the vials of liquid silver upstairs. ‘Twenty-eight clockwise. Twelve count. Forty-four counterclockwise…’ He has less than an hour left to complete this stage of the brewing. 

He curses himself. Why did he stay up last night working on the bloody cabinet? He was getting nowhere. He should have just slept. He's tired. He's _so_ tired, bones aching and every muscle cramping. The new moon seems oddly bright, burned into his retina as he runs. A countdown. 

He skids to a halt on the seventh floor, gasping for breath. Nearly there. Forty-four counterclockwise. Twenty-eight—

A sound from behind him. He stumbles, turning. ‘Who's there?’ he hisses into the shadows. 

The outlines of the suits of armor in the dark corridor almost look like moving figures in the low, flickering light. Darkness engulfs the space beyond the stairs, swallowing and concealing any movement. 

‘Lumos,’ he murmurs, and the little ball of light bobs down the corridor, revealing nothing. 

Draco hurries on to his destination. He doesn’t have time to pause and investigate. 

‘I need a place to brew my potion,’ he mutters to himself as he paces quickly in front of the wall. ‘I need a place to brew my potion. I need a place to brew my potion.’

The door appears and he hurries inside the room, already pulling the stopper on the silver vial. It is delicate work. He needs time, and he needs to focus. 

He has twenty minutes, and his brain feels scattered all over the place — but he manages. He finishes stirring just seconds before his watch chimes midnight, letting the vial clatter to the ground. He breathes out a sigh of relief that becomes a sob, collapsing onto the floor next to his bubbling cauldron. He vaguely considers just sleeping here, on the cold stone floor. But he shouldn't. He did that after the last time, and only ended up with his body aching even worse than it would otherwise. 

Instead he breathes out a shaky sigh of relief as he exits the room, door closing and vanishing behind him. He will go straight downstairs and sleep. He will— 

Draco looks up and notices the door to the empty classroom opposite him. It is partially open, cracked ajar, and light (oddly) is streaming out into the otherwise dark corridor. 

He remembers the sound behind him earlier. Was he truly followed? What is the likelihood of someone working up here at this time of night, unrelated to what he's doing?

Cautiously, Draco approaches the door and peeks inside, already drawing his wand just in case. 

His grip tightens on the hawthorn as he realises who is in the room, waiting for him. 

Pereyra is sitting on top of a desk at the far end of the room, a book open in his lap, clearly passing the time. But he looks up as he hears the door creak, and an almost wicked grin crosses his face when he spots Draco. ‘How's the wolfsbane coming along?’ he asks lightly, flipping his book closed. 

Draco takes a stumbling step backwards even as he raises his wand. _Run_ and _fight_ clash in his head as dueling instincts. His natural impulse is to flee, but the part of him that has been torn, stretched out, desperate this entire year whispers _’What's one dead mudblood in all this?’_

_You're not going to kill him, you coward._

_If I can't kill him, what hope do I have?_

‘Hey, it's alright,’ Pereyra tells him, in a tone almost like he's approaching a wild hound and unsure how it is going to react. ‘Take it easy, mate.’

Nothing is _easy_. But slowly, Draco steps into the room on shaking legs and closes the door behind him. He casts a spell to lock it. ‘I’ve no idea what you're talking about,’ he says, trying his best to sound cool and level. His voice, however, tremors from exhaustion, undermining him. ‘If you're trying to threaten me, you have nothing and it won't work.’ 

Pereyra holds up a finger and reaches into his bag, pulling out a slightly tattered leather bound notebook. He flips through the pages until he reaches the middle. He clears his throat. ‘August 19th,’ he reads. ‘Malfoy eats six bowls of porridge and falls asleep on the table. September 17th, Malfoy eats five helpings of bacon, four sausages and climbs under the breakfast table to nap. October 17th, Malfoy walks into a wall, shouts at someone who tries to help him, then walks into the wall again. November 15th, Malfoy doesn’t come to breakfast, lunch, or dinner. December—’ 

Draco can feel goosebumps on his skin. He remembers each of these moments, sick with shame. He has worked hard to hide his transformations, and he thinks he’s done a good job of it. Hiding was one thing, however. He hadn’t anticipated just how much the changes would affect him. The hunger, the exhaustion, the pain. The sick, strange feeling of being a tenant in his own skin. But no one was watching closely enough to notice. No one cared to pay that much attention. Except, apparently, Pereyra. ‘Are you _stalking_ me?’ 

Pereyra tosses him the whole notebook and Draco catches it, takes one short flick through the pages before closing his eyes and exhaling. It is a complete timetable of the moon phases, going back well over a year, including little drawings of the moon in each page’s corner. Down one side of the book are a series of notes — primarily a running track of anyone who looks sick or did anything weird on the full moon. It isn’t _all_ Draco. But he notices as he reaches the present day, for the past several months it's been _mostly_ Draco.

He throws the notebook to the floor, points his wand at it, and incinerates it in a sharp burst of fire.

‘Jokes on you,’ says Pereyra. ‘I was going to lose that anyway, sooner or later.’

Draco wonders if he's going to vomit. He sort of feels like he's going to vomit. The ground is shifting under his feet, and fear-based adrenaline is shooting through his veins, turning exhaustion into jittering panic. He is shaking all over, but Pereyra looks positively relaxed, a smile still on his lips and his wand in his fingers, twirling. 

‘I hate you,’ Draco whispers with venom. 

God, he hates Pereyra. He hasn't even realised how much he _loathes_ him until just now. It’s been two years and they have hardly exchanged a word, but still Draco can sometimes feel the phantom sensation of warm kisses on his neck and it makes him furious. One stupid evening, one foolish mistake. One moment of not guarding himself properly, and he has been tainted ever since. 

One mistake, spiralling into more. Shattering into sharp pieces. 

‘I swear I’m not here to catch you out or anything like that,’ Pereyra tells him. 

‘No, why would you be?’ Draco’s voice goes up an octave. ‘What possible reason would you have for camping in an empty classroom at midnight, waiting to trap me? Something perfectly innocent, I’m sure!’ 

A shrug of the shoulder. ‘I just really like werewolves.’ 

The words, so blithely spoken, are like poison in Draco’s veins. Pereyra looks perfectly sincere in them, too. He does not look sick or furious like Draco feels, just curious and bright eyed, as though he’s proud of himself for discovering something of interest. This is, infuriatingly, standard. The handful of times that Draco has tried to instigate with him, fast hurled insults in hallways between class, Pereyra has proved almost impossible to start with. Half the time he seems to find it funny, which leaves Draco feeling like he’s trying to fight the sky. 

‘You _like—’_ Spluttering, Draco takes a step forward into the centre of the classroom. All the desks are pushed to the back wall for some sort of class display, and this is where Pereyra sits, eyeing him. ‘Would you like to meet a werewolf, then?’ he asks, voice clipped low. ‘I might know someone, I’d be happy to set you two up. He would really like you, you’ve plenty of meat on your bones. He likes to take his time, it doesn’t even have to be the full moon. Is that what you want? A personal encounter? He’d enjoy you raw. It would be so easy. I can call him in if you like, he owes me a favour.’ 

Another one of those infuriating grins. ‘Did you just call me fat?’ 

Draco steps closer, lowering his voice further. ‘You really like werewolves, do you? What is it about them you like? Which part, _exactly?_ Is it the bit where they hunt you, pretending to be _people_ until they’ve got you alone and vulnerable? Is it the bit where they lose control, where you see the intelligence leave their eyes and suddenly they’re just beasts, and all they want to do is tear you apart? Or is it the bit where you can still see them in there, just a glimmer, just a _spark_ behind the eyes that tells you the creature doing this to you knows that you’re in pain, knows that it’s got you just where it wants you, and that it’s enjoying it?’ 

To his credit, Pereyra’s smile has flickered now. The corners of his lips are instead tight, tense. ‘But you’re not like that,’ he says. 

‘How would you know what I’m like?’ 

‘I know that you’re a gay werewolf living off wolfsbane. Not much of a pureblood showpiece anymore, are you?’ 

‘I’m not whatever you think I am,’ Draco hisses. 

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know what it’s like to—’ 

‘I’m not like you, I’m not _anything_ like you.’ 

‘Are you sure?’ Pereyra asks. ‘They’re never going to accept you now, you know that, right?’ 

Oh, that’s what this is about. 

‘Accept me? You idiot, they’ve already accepted me!’ The words are out of Draco’s mouth before he can stop them. Fuck it. What’s he got to lose? Everything is spiralling anyway. He’s been caught, the mudblood holds his life in his hands, and he’s not even taking it _seriously_. 

The expression on Pereyra’s face shifts to confusion, and then to disappointment. ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ he groans. 

Draco lets out a derisive laugh. ‘Did you think something had changed? _Nothing_ has changed. You’re pathetic, Pereyra. What? Were you carrying a sick, masochistic flame this whole time? Hoping that the poor ickle tragic werewolf will have learnt his lesson and is going to let you into his pants?’ 

‘No—’ 

Taking another step forward, Draco moves into Pereyra’s space. He said it without thinking, but desperation is pushing at him, forcing him to act. He doesn’t have anything useful to barter with, here. In this room, in this moment, he doesn’t feel like a wealthy pureblood heir. Just a scared, scrambling boy furiously trying to hold onto his secret. 

‘I would,’ he says, dropping his voice to a hum. He pushes between Pereyra’s parted knees to lean into the broad shape of his body. Pereyra recoils backwards; but he’s the one who put his back to the wall, he only has so far to go. Draco puts his hands on the desk on either side of his thighs. Pereyra’s breath is warm against his face, and he smells like oaky parchment and flushed skin and, well, faintly of weed. The last person Draco had been close enough to smell had carried the scent of blood. Boldly, Draco arches up and captures Pereyra’s lips in a fierce kiss. There’s no softness to it, and for a moment it is not returned. But then Pereyra crumbles slightly, and his lips move against Draco’s, just a short exhalation and a breath in which he kisses back. 

Draco mutters into his mouth, ‘You can do anything to me.’ Gambling like this hasn’t worked out well for him in the past, but well. He has even less to lose now. 

Pereyra’s strong hands come to his shoulders and for a second Draco thinks he’s going to pull him closer. But he’s wrong. All Pereyra does is push Draco firmly backwards, out of his personal space. ‘What the fuck kind of person do you think I am?’ he asks, appalled. 

‘The kind who “just really likes werewolves”?’

‘Yeah and what’s your plan, here? I’d shag you — and then what? Is it an exchange, do I get to keep coming back whenever I feel like it and you’ll give it up so that I’ll keep my fat mouth shut?’ 

‘If that’s what you want.’ 

‘Sounds like you just really fancy bedding a mudblood and can't admit it,’ Pereyra points out. He lets out a dismissive sound. ‘That’s not up my alley, thanks. I'm not gonna do that.’

A surprise fury flares up inside Draco. ‘This is your fault, you know!’ he spits. ‘That I'm like this! You are the one that ruined me, you’re a contamination, you giant filthy mudblood. You don't come back from that — half the school knew that _something_ happened, I was lucky it didn't get back to my parents! You were what started this. It's your fault a werewolf was only the next step down.’

‘Oh, fucking— I didn't contaminate you, Malfoy. We snogged for an hour at a Christmas party and you came in your pants. Let's not talk it up to more than it was. Someone can't _tarnish_ or _contaminate_ someone else, that's just not how the real world works. You’re your own bloody human being, take responsibility.’ 

‘Do you hear yourself? For someone who claims to love werewolves so much, you're rather dismissive of how it spreads.’ 

‘Fine. But there's a big difference between me and a werewolf.’ 

‘Is there? You're both half-breed freaks.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ Pereyra shoots back. ‘I didn't follow you tonight to try to get anything from you, Malfoy. Yeah, you're a bit right, maybe I did think you'd have changed, that seeing things from a different perspective… It didn't occur to me that you'd have—’ Pereyra cuts himself off. ‘You're just trying to make yourself sound tough, right? Talk it up? You're not _actually_ a Death Eater. They wouldn't take you.’ 

‘Wouldn't they?’

‘You're seventeen, you're in school. What are you going to do for them?’

Draco does not correct him, because somehow it feels like noting that his birthday isn’t until the summer isn't going to strengthen his position here. Instead he just glares him down and rolls up his sleeve. 

He realizes as he does so that one way or another, one of them is not going to leave this room tonight intact. He's making mistakes and being careless. He's losing to himself as he fights to win against the mudblood. The mudblood who isn't even really fighting him, not enough. 

‘Well, that's fucked up,’ says Pereyra, looking at the tattoo with disgust written plainly on his features.‘That's super fucked up.’ 

‘Didn’t you just say I need to take responsibility?’ Draco replies snidely. ‘So, here I am. Between you and me, I can’t think of much more responsibility I could take on.’ 

‘You don’t understand what you’re doing.’ 

‘No, you don’t understand. You’re sitting here trying to talk to me, when you should be trying to save your skin, if you’re half as smart as you think you are. You don’t have long, Pereyra.’ 

‘Fuck, I know that.’ Pereyra stands up, runs a hand through his hair, pulling it tight for a moment. ‘I know better than you what it’s like to be a mudblood at this stupid school.’ 

‘You can’t call _yourself_ a mudblood, you stupid mudblood.’ 

‘I can call myself what I like. Who gives a shit? It’s what I am.’ He sighs. ‘You have a choice to change, Malfoy. You can stop being a Death Eater at any time. The only way I can stop being a mudblood is if I die. That’s the difference between you and me.’

Draco laughs in his face. ‘The only way to stop being a _Death Eater_ is to die!’ he exclaims, feeling hysterical. ‘They don’t let you _out_!’ 

‘Do you want out, then?’ 

‘What I _want_ is to stop being— fucking broken. You did this to me. It's your fault. You took everything from me, that's all mudbloods do. You take our magic, you take our—’ 

‘Not this bullshit. You know we don't take fuck all from you. You know we're born like this. I didn't even want to be a wizard, Malfoy, I didn't steal my magic.’ 

Draco laughs again. ‘ _Didn't want to be a wizard?_ ’ he mocks. ‘You're not a wizard. What did you want to be, then? An accountant?’

‘I don't know! A vet? A marine biologist? Do you think I was sitting around at ten years old waiting for my Hogwarts letter to come and plotting to steal a wand so I could go to wizard school? Because I wasn't. I was going to the library every afternoon to read about government conspiracies and weird animals! I was trying to work out why I was different, but I never wanted this.’ 

Snorting, Draco forces a smirk. ‘If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you just go live as a muggle? Go become a vet. You should. You’ll never belong in our world.’ 

Pereyra scrubs a hand over his face, laughing. He turns, pacing the room. ‘You think I fit in there either?’ he asks. ‘You think I never had people tell me I didn’t “belong here” when I went to a muggle school? When my mum didn’t speak English, I had an accent, I looked like this?’ 

‘Looked like what?’ 

‘Like a pick ‘n’ mix of every type of brown? Black hair, Asian eyes, freckles, fat, gay, weird. You think I’ve ever belonged anywhere? I don’t _give a fuck_ about where I belong.’ He lets out an irritated laugh. ‘I know that it’s different here, you’ve just transplanted regular day-to-day racism with blood purity nonsense. In the muggle world probably even someone as bigoted as you could slide by pretending to be “colour-blind” or whatever and no one would pick up on it, but—’ 

‘I have no idea what you’re rambling on about,’ Draco interjects. ‘Or why I should care.’ 

‘You should care because you’re in the same boat now. Can’t be a wizard, because everyone will hate you for being a werewolf. Can’t go be a muggle, because everyone will hate you for being gay.’ 

‘I wouldn’t want to be a muggle anyway. And no one knows I’m a werewolf, I can keep it under wraps.’ 

‘And you’ll just live like that forever, will you?’ 

‘I don’t have a choice,’ Draco says, feeling lead sink in his stomach. Pereyra has stopped pacing. He’s moved over to the window, leaning against the sill and looking out over the castle grounds. Draco swallows. He knows he shouldn’t be talking to Pereyra. He should be finding a way to shut him up. But it’s been months of silence, of keeping it in, of hurting. Taking comfort in something as stupid as venting to a muggleborn in the middle of the night is definitely not his wisest move, but knowing that for once, _once_ this year he isn’t spinning himself in circles of lies and secrets is oddly therapeutic. 

After a few long moments, Draco clears his throat and says: ‘Last year, you weren’t part of that little… club that Potter was running. You must have known about it.’ 

‘Yep,’ Pereyra says, glancing at Draco. ‘I was across all that.’ 

‘Why didn’t you join? It seems like exactly the sort of thing someone as sanctimonious as you would go in for.’ 

‘Oh, if you think I’m sanctimonious now, you’re not going to like why I didn’t go along with it.’ 

‘Mm?’ 

Pereyra grins wryly and shrugs a broad shoulder. ‘I didn’t think it was addressing the real problems. It was reactive to one bad situation, when the tide has already been turning for years. I also just didn’t like the name.’ 

‘So then, how are _you_ addressing the “real” problems?’ 

‘I’m running away,’ he admits. ‘As soon as I have my N.E.W.T.s, I’m gone. I’m sure as fuck not sticking around in Britain.’ 

‘Where will you go?’ 

‘Brazil, most likely. I have family there.’ 

Draco narrows his eyes. ‘And what are you going to do in Brazil?’ 

‘I don’t know. Play Quidditch and fuck around a lot? Maybe go to university for a bit and get some sort of easy job I don’t have to think about too much?’ 

‘That sounds revolutionary,’ Draco says snidely. ‘Positively grassroots. You sure showed Granger.’ 

‘You got me. It turns out my ideological objections to other people’s resistance actions are actually just me putting off praxis in favour of bumming around and stalking werewolves.’ 

Surprising himself, Draco laughs — just a soft, short laugh — but in that same moment he meets Pereyra’s eyes, and finds him looking back at him with, if not a smile, something close. 

‘Well,’ Draco says, breaking eye contact. ‘This has been an enlightening evening. But I do think it’s time to get to bed. Great job on the werewolf hunting, really. Well done. And I do hope, for your sake, that you stick with this plan of leaving the country. Perhaps sooner would be better than later, I’m not even sure I’d wait out exams if I were you.’ Draco rolls his wand in his fingers, before pointing it at the Ravenclaw. ‘Unfortunately,’ he says. ‘You are not going to remember that piece of advice.’ 

Pereyra freezes. His voice takes on a warning tone. ‘Malfoy…’ 

‘I’ve never done this before,’ Draco admits. ‘It might be a little messy. Hopefully I don’t remove too much, but one way or another…’ 

For the first time, Pereyra looks genuinely panicked. ‘Don’t—’ he interjects quickly. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone, I swear—’ 

Draco takes a step closer to him. ‘Even if I could trust that,’ he tells him. ‘You can’t know all this. You shouldn’t have stuck your dumb nose where it didn’t belong, Pereyra.’ 

He doesn’t even get a chance to raise his wand. Pereyra is faster than he expected — which is stupid, because he’s seen him play Quidditch, he knows how quick he can move. Pereyra doesn’t cast a spell; he just darts out his hand and grabs Draco’s wrist, twisting just enough that his wand clatters to the ground. And then doesn’t release his grip. 

‘Let go of me,’ Draco hisses. 

Pereyra kicks Draco’s wand across the floor, sending it clattering under the pile of desks. ‘Don't do this,’ he says. ‘Just walk away.’

‘I can't leave this room knowing you know this about me.’ He knows his voice sounds desperate, cracking slightly on the words. The exhaustion still moving sluggishly through his body makes it hard to keep himself calm. He can almost feel heat pricking behind his eyes. 

‘Well, that sucks,’ says Pereyra. ‘Do I have to petrify you, then? While I go get a teacher?’ 

‘No! Don't!’ Draco is definitely back to begging now. ‘No one can _know_ , Pereyra. I'd rather death to that.’ 

‘Oh my gosh. Chill.’ 

‘No, I won't!’ Draco takes a deep breath. ‘Do me one favor, then. Just one. One thing, and we'll both walk out of here.’ 

‘All your ideas are bad,’ says Pereyra. 

‘Wipe my memories of tonight,’ Draco pleads. ‘If you're serious, if you really never wanted to catch me out. I'll trust you to keep my secret, but I just can't know that you know. Or that I’ve said this. I can't.’ 

Pereyra hesitates. ‘You really want me to do that?’ 

‘If you can promise me you won't tell anyone that I'm a werewolf, ever.’ 

‘No, of course I wouldn't do that.’

‘I believe you,’ Draco says, and to his surprise, finds he is sincere. He trusts Pereyra. He shouldn't, but he does. ‘I trust you. Just the last hour, that's all that needs to go.’ 

Pereyra’s strong fingers tighten their grip on Draco’s wrist a fraction. He looks concerned. ‘One hour?’ he asks, unconvinced. 

And Draco wakes up on the floor of an empty classroom. It aches like the last time he did this, sleeping on the floor following a transformation. He pushes himself up, blearily looking out the window, where cool morning light streams into the classroom. 

He rubs his eyes, pulling the conjured blanket off his shoulders. At least he apparently had _some_ presence of mind after attending his potion last night, before passing out in the nearest room. It would be awful to be cold in addition to bone-deep sore. 

He wraps the blanket around himself as he stands up, trembling slightly. It's time for breakfast, he tells himself. He did it. He made it another night. He made it to one more morning without everything falling apart. That's all that matters.


	3. Chapter 3

It's cold in Washington, DC. Snow is falling in soft flurries, and the chill on the air cuts to Draco’s bones deeper than it ever does in Britain. Even with warming charms cast on his gloves, the hand pulling his luggage feels stiff with chill. Unfortunately the hotel is a muggle one, and the statute is still technically in effect, so he cannot charm the case to follow him on its own. 

The door to the hotel is opened for him by a skinny young bellboy, who offers to take his bag. Draco passes it to him, relieved at the immediate gust of warmth from inside the main atrium. He pulls off his woolen hat and his gloves, approaching the desk. Muggles may not have magic fire or warming charms, but they've have done a fair job with central heating, he has to admit. 

‘The booking is under Malfoy,’ he says at the front desk. 'Three nights.’ 

From a few feet behind him, he hears someone speak. ‘Malfoy?’ 

He hesitates—the voice is only distantly familiar, but the feelings it stirs in him are grim. Still, he turns, looking over his shoulder as the muggle woman at the desk pulls up his reservation. His stomach drops. 

'Pereya,’ he greets, feeling the name move like sandpaper in his throat. 

The Ravenclaw Beater. Somehow that is still how he thinks of him, after all these years. He looks different, of course. They both look different, it's been twelve years, and a very long twelve years at that. Pereyra is as tall as ever, with a short beard and long hair pulled up into a high knot. He's wearing an incredibly soft looking knitted jumper, a patchwork of dark reds, yellows and blues. He looks a world apart from Draco.

'Are you here for the conference?’ 

‘I've been roped into speaking at the workshops on preventing recidivism,’ Draco drawls. ‘What are you doing here?’ 

‘I'm running a panel,’ he says. The fact that he doesn't say more makes Draco think it's on something that cannot be spoken about right in front of muggles.

'I see.’ 

The pause is long and uncomfortable.

‘So how _do_ you prevent recidivism?’ Pereyra asks.

‘In my experience? Vilify people in the press and hold the only treatment for their illness hostage in exchange for their compliance.’ He pauses, reading Pereyra's expression, and he adds, ‘I'm being a touch facetious.’ 

‘That is what happened.’ 

‘A lot of things happened.’ Draco turns back to the receptionist to finish checking in and take his keys. He is given a short spiel about room service and places to eat nearby, which he doesn't listen to. When he turns again, Pereyra is on the phone, his back to Draco, clearly deeply involved in conversation. 

Draco goes up to his room, frowning. He still feels cold, and it has to be from the lingering chill outside, but instead it feels like waking up on cold stone, and he doesn't know why.

*

The conference is populated by a mix of muggles and wizards. It is not the first of its kind. The purpose of these kinds of gatherings is to slowly hash out the details of dissolving the various Statutes of Secrecy around the world, a process which is slow going. 

_OpenX: Artificing Bonds Between Magical, Muggle and Monster._

Over breakfast Draco listens to a muggle from Britain give an impassioned speech about her wizard brother, and about how the segregation of muggle and wizard society breaks apart families. She talks about the fall of Voldemort, and about silence, and about how she didn't understand what had killed her brother, with whom she had not spoken to for several years prior to his death, until almost a decade after the fact. She says, we can do better. 

At dinner, Pereyra sits down next to him. They are at a round table with six other people, and for a moment it feels like the Yule Ball again.

‘I enjoyed your talk,’ he tells Draco.

Draco didn’t enjoy talking. He never enjoys it—laying out the bones, the dirty laundry, the shame—but he does it anyway. He isn’t an activist or an academic or an orator like most of the people here. He’s a case study. 

‘You were the trigger for all this, you do know,’ Draco replies. ‘It’s your fault.’ 

Pereyra draws in a breath, seemingly startled. 

But Draco speaks over whatever he’s about to say. ‘A werewolf was only the next step down from you.’ 

‘Really? You still think that, after all these years?’ 

‘Why wouldn’t I? You ruined my _life_.’ 

‘We’re not having this conversation again,’ Pereyra says. Draco nearly objects that they’ve never had this conversation before, but stops himself. He doesn’t think so. He thinks he would remember, but then, sixth year was a blur. Who knows what he said in an exhaustion induced haze. ‘You sounded like you've changed.’ 

Shrugging, Draco shifts in his chair and pulls off his jacket. It's warm in the dining hall. Around them, hundreds of people are absorbed in conversation. He hangs the jacket on the back of his chair and then rolls up the sleeves on the light cashmere shirt he's wearing underneath. His Dark Mark is on full display. 

‘What happened to you?’ he asks Pereyra. 'I half thought you'd been taken by death eaters and wound up dead in a forest somewhere.’ 

‘Nah, just barely avoided it I think. Left the country. Ended up over here. Do I sound American yet?’ 

'Yes,’ Draco says. ‘It's bad.’ 

'After what I did, snatchers would have got me eventually.’ 

‘What did you do?’ 

Pereyra seems startled. ‘Did no one tell you?’ 

'Tell me what?’ 

Shaking his head, Pereyra says, 'I didn't—’ He cuts himself off.

‘What is it?’ 

‘It's nothing,’ Pereyra insists, suddenly seeming very absorbed in filling up his glass of water. He won't meet Draco's eyes. ‘It's like you said today. It's in the past.’ He rapidly changes the topic. ‘Hey, come to my panel tomorrow. It doesn't clash with your workshop, and I think you'll like it.’ 

* 

“Like” is a strong word for how Draco feels attending Pereyra's panel. There are four speakers. One is Veela academic, a neat looking young man with a short silver beard and a sweater vest. One is a garden gnome sitting on a very, very, very tall stack of conjured cushions so that she can be seen over the table. She has a swear jar in front of her. The third speaker is an extremely disgruntled and hungover looking vampire who looks vaguely familiar to Draco. He's wearing dark sunglasses and, before the panel starts, has his head resting on his arms, clearly snoozing. Finally, there's Remus Lupin, representative of werewolves everywhere. The panel is on “Voices from the Margins”. 

Ostensibly, the discussion is about non-human rights. Lupin and the Veela are trying their hardest to keep it on topic. The gnome doesn't have a lot to contribute. The problem arises during the introductions. The vampire does not seem engaged in the process—he is seated beside Pereyra, who is moderating in the centre, and keeps leaning over to murmur in his ear, in between taking long drinks from a blue Gatorade bottle filled with red liquid. He is acting very familiar, his arm slung across the back of Pereyra's little hotel lobby chair, and Pereyra doesn't seem to mind, precisely, but he does seem to be getting a little irritated at the distraction from the flow of the panel. 

When it comes time for the vampire to introduce himself, he doesn't notice until Pereyra elbows him. 'Dolohov,’ he says, sounding bored. ‘There are three things I love to do, and the third is _not_ sitting on humanitarian interest panels. But you could indeed say I am a humanitarian.’ 

A few people laugh uncomfortably when Dolohov winks. Draco isn't among them. He knows that voice and he knows that face, now. 

Plenty of death eaters were sentenced after the war. Plenty more disappeared. Some, like Draco, were (quote and unquote) “rehabilitated”. Antonin Dolohov, Draco thought, was one of the ones who vanished—at least, he never heard whisper about him. And yet here he is. 

Draco expects it to cause a stir. He expects Dolohov’s name to cause a shiver through the audience like the shiver it stirred inside Draco, and he expects someone to speak up, to ask why a death eater is speaking on non-human rights. But no one does, and Draco realises Dolohov’s name has been forgotten, left behind in the blur of history. 

In any case, Dolohov’s inclusion on the panel doesn’t last long. Before twenty minutes has passed, he has emptied his Gatorade bottle, and that was apparently the only thing keeping him present, because within moments he is saying, ‘I have better things to be doing than this.’ He pushes his chair back and stands up. 

‘Come on,’ Pereyra says. ‘I told you I’d—’ 

Lupin interjects. ‘Let him go.’ 

Dolohov kicks the table in front of him over, sending papers and the coins from the gnome’s swear jar scattering everywhere, and says, ‘Anyone who wants to make this a party, I’ll be in room three-oh-six.’ 

Then he walks out, with a dramatic turn of his coat, and a number of people in the audience shrug and follow him. 

‘Do you know he was a death eater?’ Draco asks later in the evening, over drinks. The hotel bar is nearly empty; it's late, and it is a Tuesday. They are sitting at the bar in the corner, next to an open window that looks out over the dim street outside, a street light flickering every few moments. Pereyra is drinking a beer, his fingers loose on the neck of the bottle. 

‘Yeah,’ he answers. ‘That's why it's important to have him. Like you. We've come a long way, but anti-muggleborn sentiment lingers under the surface. It simmers away, until it has a chance to creep it's way to the light like a weed that won't go away. We need people who've been in that place.’ 

'Dolohov isn't the right one,’ Draco tells him. ‘He doesn't care. He didn't care about exterminating muggleborns before. He didn't care about wizarding supremacy. He just saw a chance to be able to have a certain life with the Dark Lord in power.’ 

Pereyra takes a draught from his beer and shrugs in a conceding sort of way. 'I hooked up with him a while back,’ he admits. 

Draco spits up into his drink. 'Can you stop shagging death eaters?’ he asks incredulously. ‘What's wrong with you?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know I'm garbage. It's just because he a vampire though, in my defence.’

‘That is _not_ a defence.’

‘Also,’ Pereyra raises a finger. ‘You and I never actually shagged.’ 

Draco looks at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Maybe we should change that.’

* 

Although Pereyra grins and although they steal away, they don't change that. 

Instead, Pereyra says, ‘Apparently there's a conservatory on the roof of this hotel that's open in the summer. It's closed now and the lifts won't take us up, but do you wanna check it out?’

'We both have rooms, you know,’ replies Draco. 'Rather than some stupid garden.’ But he lets Pereyra side-along him from the seclusion of the hotel stairwell onto the roof of the building. It's a beautiful view, the inky black of night stretching across what they can see of the sparkling city, the Washington Monument lit up in a cool green light in the distance. Pereyra was right—there's a small, dark, locked conservatory up here, just the size of a house, with ornate steel framing and glass windows and ceiling. 

An Alohomora does the trick on the heavy lock and chain on the door, and a charm from Pereyra's wand sends little dancing spheres of lights to float above them, bathing the enclosed garden in soft, golden light. History has a funny way of repeating itself, Draco thinks, as he wanders over to a low bridge that crosses an empty artificial riverbed and leans on the wooden fencing. Another night. Another winter. Another garden. 

‘It _was_ my fault,’ Pereyra says. 

‘At the Yule Ball? Nah.’ Draco sighs. 'I still tell myself that. It makes me feel better to pass the blame onto someone else.’ He looks at his hands. The moon is bright above them, a sharp crescent. ‘It couldn't have been me that did this to myself.’

'No, not that. That wasn't on me at all. That was just good fun until you had to go make it weird.’ He's still at the door of the conservatory, leaning against the frame of the wall with his arms crossed. When he speaks, his breath comes out in light condensation on the air. ‘You didn't do it to yourself either, it doesn't work that way.’ 

'I played a dangerous game, and I lost.’ 

'Are you always this dramatic?’ 

Draco looks off into the distance somberly. ‘You can never trust a werewolf.’ 

Huffing, Pereyra says, ‘I didn't bring you up here so you could come onto me by being tragic and use my well documented weakness for monsters against me.’ 

'Oh.’ Draco hesitates. ‘Why are we up here then?’ 

'I obliviated you.’

Ice trickles down Draco’s spine. ‘You did what?’ 

‘I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you, I wanted to forget I ever did it. But you should know. I'd want to know, if it was me.’ 

He sounds apologetic, voice low, but with his words the tone between them changes sharply, harshly.

'I _knew_ it,’ Draco hisses, turning to face and advance on Pereyra. 'I knew that you did something to me. You lying, filthy—’ He cuts himself off, biting back words he doesn't want to say. ‘What did you take from me? What is it you stole?’

‘It isn't what you think—’ 

‘You are just like him.’

‘Like who?’

‘Greyback!’ Draco lets out a ragged exhale, pressing his palms to his forehead. Something is pounding, thudding at the back of his mind, a sense which is intrinsically linked to Pereyra. He's been feeling it these past few days. It's a bone deep ache. It's exhaustion. ‘You both took pieces of me for yourselves. Everything could have been—everything _should_ have been different.’ 

‘Do you think it would have been better? If I'd just let you go through with it? Malfoy, look at me.’ 

Draco squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, before dropping his hands on a groan and doing as Pereyra asked. 

He's staring back at Draco, looking torn, and he says, ‘You asked me to wipe your memories.’ 

'I wouldn't.’ 

‘You did. I wouldn't’ve, otherwise, but… you begged me to. You said you couldn't live with me knowing.’

Realisation floods through him. ‘You found out what I am.’ 

'Yeah.’ 

Sixth year, then. Draco tries to search his memories of that time for a gap, something to fill… but there are too many. That whole year is fragmented, like scattered shards of glass. Like the splintered wood of a broken cabinet. Everyone knows now what Draco is. Then, however, it would have killed him. 

'I don't understand,’ Draco mutters, looking down. ‘When—How much did you take?’ 

‘Only an hour.’ 

'No, that's not right. There's more missing. You're lying again, I can see it on your face. You can't lie for shit.’ Draco can feel his voice raising. 'I would have done anything to keep that a secret. There's pieces missing everywhere. What did you do to me? How many times did you—’

'I didn't!’ Pereyra cuts him off, sharp. ‘You were sleep deprived, asshole. That's why you can't remember anything. It was only an hour.’ 

‘There’s more,’ Draco says. He squints at Pereyra, reading the expression on his face. He said it instinctively, but he knows he’s right. It’s true—Pereyra can’t lie. He doesn’t have the features for it. Secrets sit on him plain as day, like they want to get out on their own. ‘There _is_ more. You said so the other night. Snatchers would have got you after what you did. It can’t be this, they wouldn’t care. There’s something you’re not telling me.’ 

‘Yeah, alright, I…’ Pereyra scrubs his palm across his beard. ‘I tried to tell Dumbledore you were a death eater.’ 

_‘Tried_ to?’ 

‘Look man, I don’t know. I went to him a few days after I obliviated you. I promised you that I wouldn’t dob you in for being a werewolf, but I never promised to keep the death eater shit secret.’ He pushes this detail like its important, like it absolves him of something which has been weighing him down for a long time. ‘But he didn’t seem to care. He just gave me a look and said something dismissive and cryptic, and I could tell he wasn’t gonna do shit. So I went to Flitwick and Slughorn instead. And I reckon you know the rest, yeah?’ 

Draco does know the rest. ‘It was you,’ he says, voice low. It had seemed to come out of nowhere, back then. ‘They took me from class. I had no idea how they found out. I blamed Potter, somehow. But it wasn’t Potter, it was just you. You _did_ ruin my life! You act like I’m ridiculous, saying you’re like Greyback, but you’re just as bad. I went to prison! I was exposed to everyone for what I was! What gave you the right?’ 

‘I asked myself that. It's why it took me days to say anything. I don’t like going behind people’s backs. I thought about approaching you again, trying to convince you to come forward yourself, but—’ 

‘I wouldn’t have gone for it.’ 

‘Exactly. And I couldn’t do nothing. I knew you must’ve been planning something. I knew if it went on it would go bad. Not just for us, but for you. I figured it would be better for everyone.’ 

‘Oh, _thank you,’_ Draco drawls sarcastically. ‘It wasn’t _fucking_ better. The Dark Lord knew my plans fell through, and I was stuck in a damp, filthy cell, waiting and I didn’t even know if my mother and father were still alive. I couldn’t have my wolfsbane. That’s how they found out, that's how they found me, turning in my cell. I have scars, here—’ Draco pulls his hands, fingers splayed like claws across his upper arms. ‘Because all I had to rip apart was iron bars, or myself, and I was already used to the latter.’ 

‘And your plans that fell through, what were they?’ 

‘To get death eaters into Hogwarts and kill Dumbledore,’ Draco snaps. ‘Yes, I get it, okay? That would have been “really bad”. But not for me!’ 

‘People could have died! Students! Probably me, filthy mudblood that I am.’ 

‘Yes, and instead of me killing Dumbledore, you went and got him pulled up in front of the Wizengamot. Congratulations.’ 

Pereyra blinks in surprise. ‘Wait, I did what?’ 

‘Because he didn’t intervene with me,’ Draco explains, like it is obvious. ‘He got a subpoena, ended up on trial.’ 

Pereyra bites his lip, and it takes Draco a moment to realise that he’s amused. ‘I got Dumbledore subpoenaed?’ 

‘How didn’t you know this?’ 

‘Mate, I was long gone. You told me yourself, just before I wiped your memory, to leave as soon as possible. I took your advice. I was an ocean away, wasn’t following what was going on at all. If you can’t tell, when I run, I run. I just wanted to put it behind me.’ 

‘Lucky you,’ Draco mutters. ‘It was a mess. They say we avoided a war, but I don’t know. It didn’t feel like it.’ He lets out a heavy breath and drops down onto a wrought iron chair under a hanging vine, carding his fingers through his hair. 

Pereyra takes a step closer. ‘But it got better eventually,’ he says. ‘You seem to be doing okay?’ 

‘Not a passive thing,’ Draco corrects. ‘It didn’t just get better on its own. I never went to Azkaban, but I was still detained for a long time. I have a good social worker. I can do useful stuff, like this, and it…’ A shrug of the shoulder. ‘I’m still furious at you. It is this poison, inside me, and I wish I didn’t have it. Furious at you, furious at Greyback, furious at Voldemort, furious at Potter. All the people who made my life this misery, this monthly cycle that keeps me trapped. I can’t think this is the best version of me. And now you’re telling me that I asked for it to be this way, to just not _know_. So maybe the poison is just… me.’ 

They are both quiet for a long moment. Pereya lowers himself to sit on the steps of the bridge, and gives Draco a wonky, somewhat regretful smile which Draco hesitantly returns, before expelling a short laugh. ‘Merlin.’ 

‘I’m still running, you know,’ Pereyra tells him. ‘Still hiding in America from the fallout at home. I thought I’d let it all go until I saw you, and I realised I owed you the truth.’ 

‘It's changed back home, too. But it's not like it is here. Things are very entrenched. Families like mine are very… We still have our roots in deep.’ 

Pereyra nods, then laughs under his breath. ‘There's one other thing from when I wiped your memories,’ he says, ‘that I think you should know.’

‘What?’ 

Pereyra raises an eyebrow. 'I still really like werewolves.’

Breaking eye contact with him, Draco looks up at the sky. ‘This is my favourite moon.’ He gestures with a lazy flick of the wrist to the glass ceiling above them. ‘It always comes back round to this, like clockwork, and for a while at least, it’s good.’ 

*

Pereyra is on another panel the next day, but it is at the same time as Draco’s workshop, so he doesn’t go. After the session, he takes the chance to head out of the hotel, and wraps up against the cold and wanders the streets in the chilly afternoon for a long time. 

He asks himself, would it hurt? It is stupid and it is optimistic to feel this way, to feel his heart thud in his chest thinking about a muggleborn he hasn’t spoken to in over a decade, who he hated for most of his life, and none of his life, because that hatred long since turned inward and, maybe, it’s time to let it go. All of it.

Would it hurt, to take a chance? There is no universe in which they would work together. Draco is going home tomorrow and Pereyra, by his own admission, is still running. But it feels like the new moon to him. Temporary, but a reprieve from pain, and a promise that it will come around again.

That evening, Draco finds Pereyra at dinner and they eat together along with the Veela academic from the panel yesterday. Draco says, ‘Pereyra, would you please shut up,’ when he won’t stop making bad jokes about werewolves, and Pereyra says: We’re not in school anymore. Call me Nico, honestly.’ 

It feels strange, and unfamiliar on his tongue, but Draco does, and by the time they part again for the night, Draco is thinking that if it's going to hurt, it would hurt more not to try. 

*

The next day is the last day of the conference, no workshops or panels today, just keynote talks and Draco decides he doesn't care about them at all. The sun has broken through the clouds, bright enough to make the day not one meant to be spent inside dry, heated rooms. 

He said goodnight to Nico at his room last night, so he knows which it is. He also knows Nico is an early riser, always has been, so without much hesitation he knocks on the door of the room at eight-thirty in the morning, already dressed for heading out. _We can ditch this together._

It takes a long moment for the door to open, and when it does it's not Nico on the other side. 

'Draco!’ Dolohov greets, surprisingly warmly for someone who, the last time they interacted, was plotting dominion over muggles in Draco's dining room. He reaches out and takes Draco's face in cold hands, kissing his cheeks in greeting. Draco winces back and wipes his hand over his face. 

Dolohov is wearing nothing but a bathrobe, his hair messy. Draco frowns and looks past him. The room is empty, bed rumpled. 

‘This is meant to be Nico's room,’ Draco comments.

‘It is,’ Dolohov replies. 'Well, was. He checked out an hour ago.’

‘Where's he gone?’

Dolohov shrugs. ‘Somewhere else.’

It takes Draco a moment to respond, peering over Dolohov's shoulder to try and see if any trace of Nico is left behind. A jacket, or a book, or a spot of blood just in case he can't trust this vampire. There's nothing. ‘Well, alright then,’ he says finally. 

He was right, he decides. It does hurt most not to try.

‘In my experience,’ Dolohov says, leaning against the door frame and looking at Draco searchingly. ‘People come back round when you're not looking for them.’ 

‘That's easy for you to say, you're immortal.’ 

But Draco decides to take the advice anyway, and leaves on his own. He doesn't stay in DC, instead finding an earlier portkey back to England than the one he had booked, and ends up at a small coffee shop in London, waiting out a flurry of snow. He looks out the frosted windows at the muggles passing by. There's no way it would have worked anyway, he realises, stirring his spoon in the foam gathered at the top of his mug. Not with the moon changing every night.


End file.
